Systems employing numerous devices often require or otherwise benefit from the ability for these devices to communicate with one another. While each device may have its own purpose and responsibilities, they may need to transmit information to, and/or receive information from, other devices of the system. Device-to-device communication may be accomplished by wiring the devices together, and communicating via the wires. In more recent times more and more systems are employing wireless communication, which generally makes installation more convenient, and among other things provides greater flexibility and scalability.
A drawback to wireless communication is that information transfer is not confined to a wire, as in a direct wired system. Rather the information is sent over the air, which makes the transmitted information potentially perceivable by neighboring devices within the wireless transmission range. In order to address this issue, wireless network systems employ addressing schemes to ensure that transmitting devices can properly address targeted devices, and the targeted devices can reject information from neighboring devices that are not within their system but are within their reception range.
For a transmitting device to properly address target devices, the transmitting device must gain knowledge of the addresses of those target devices. This may be performed at the time of installation of the system devices. For example, system devices may each be temporarily set to a binding mode, such as by activating user interface mechanisms on each device. While in this active binding mode, address identifiers of the communication devices in binding mode can be exchanged so that the devices become aware of each other's addresses. This exchange of addresses and possibly other information is referred to herein as “binding” the devices to one another. After the appropriate address information has been exchanged, the devices exit the binding mode. By knowing each other's unique addresses, messages sent during normal operation can be properly directed to intended recipients, and the intended recipients can determine if an incoming message originated from a sending device in its own system.
In order to perform such a binding procedure, an installer typically manipulates designated user interface (UI) mechanisms to enter the binding mode. However some devices may not be equipped with such UI mechanisms, or it is not economically desirable or feasible to equip them with these UI mechanisms. There may also be situations where a new device, or a device not originally designed to operate in the system, may need or want to communicate within the system. Such devices may not be configured to undergo the normal binding process, and therefore could not communicate with other devices of the system.
Additionally, there may be design reasons to have a certain device communicate with another device, yet binding such devices would not be intuitive to an installer due to the inconspicuous purpose. Even if instructions indicate to do so, installers may be confused as to why two devices should be bound where the function of those devices does not intuitively suggest a connection pair.
Accordingly, there is a need in the communications industry for a manner of binding two or more devices for at least the purpose of communicating information between the devices, without having to perform an initial binding procedure. The present invention fulfills these and other needs, and offers other advantages over the prior art.